360 Chicago hasn’t decided how it will use the two floors, which are located directly above its 94th-floor observation deck. A representative said the space will no longer be used as a restaurant.

Operating a restaurant “simply isn’t our business model,” said 360 Chicago Managing Director Nichole Benolken. But the space will remain open to the public.

“We’re not going to put an exclusive private club up there,” Benolken said. “We’re uniquely suited, given our investment into and presence in the building, to create something spectacular.”

The abrupt closure of the Signature Room, one of the city’s iconic tourist attractions, was a blow to the Magnificent Mile, where the retail vacancy rate has soared as a result of online shopping trends and the pandemic. A message posted last September to the restaurant’s social media pages cited COVID-19 and subsequent “severe economic hardship.”

The shopping district’s vacancy rate hit about 30% last year, a historic high, said Magnificent Mile Association CEO Kimberly Bares, but 360 Chicago’s investment shows new uses can be found for empty properties.

“360 Chicago is breaking all kinds of records, so they clearly understand what consumers crave,” she said. “And having this space used by someone who we all agree is a successful and sophisticated operator will spill over to the rest of the Magnificent Mile.”

Magnicity, the French company that owns 360 Chicago, invested about $17 million into the building after buying the 94th floor more than 10 years ago, adding attractions such as Tilt, a moving glass ledge that for two minutes dangles guests more than 1,000 feet above the street, and CloudBar, now the highest bar in Chicago. The company operates similar attractions atop buildings in Rotterdam, Berlin and Paris. It plans to open next year an observation deck, rooftop terrace, garden and bar on the top floors of Warsaw’s Varso Tower, the European Union’s tallest skyscraper.

“We know the challenges of operating at the top of a superstructure,” Benolken said. “We’ll lean into what we’re good at.”

The skyscraper formerly known as the John Hancock Center, located at 875 N. Michigan Ave., has a complex ownership structure, with different investors owning its residences, offices, retail and rooftop broadcast antennas. In 2012, New York-based Madison Capital and Newark, New Jersey-based PGIM, Inc. bought the ground-floor retail and the Signature Room and Signature Lounge spaces for $141 million, and Magnicity paid $18.5 million for the 94th floor, according to county property records. The price paid by Magnicity this week for the 95th and 96th floors was not disclosed.

The Signature Room’s closure remains controversial.

After the previous owners abruptly shuttered the restaurant and lounge in September, a union representing the Signature Room and Signature Lounge employees sued in federal court, alleging staff were fired in violation of the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act.

The law, known as the WARN Act, requires certain large employers to provide 60 days’ notice of some business closures or mass layoffs. In March, a federal judge issued a default judgment against the Signature Room’s management firm, Infusion Management Group Inc., after it failed to respond to the lawsuit. The company owed former workers $1.5 million in back pay and benefits, the judge ruled, giving the company 30 days to comply with the order.

That deadline has since passed and workers have not received payouts, according to Unite Here Local 1, the union representing the former employees. A representative from Local 1 said the union is pursuing legal action to enforce the order.

Benolken said the Magnificent Mile still faces challenges as it recovers from the retail industry’s shakeup. But tourists and other visitors have returned in big numbers, and several empty spaces along Michigan Avenue have new uses, including the former Crate & Barrel store at 646 N. Michigan Ave., now the five-floor Starbucks Reserve Roastery, where the company showcases its coffees, its history, as well as the roasting process.

“That shows there is room for new experiential retail on the avenue,” she said. “And we’re seeing tourists coming from all areas of the world. Foot traffic is fully recovered.”

The sale to 360 Chicago will definitely provide the Magnificent Mile with another boost, said Anthony Ciaravino, a retail broker and director at Cushman & Wakefield, but the district still needs a full range of restaurants to be a true hub, and his restaurant clients say operating on North Michigan Avenue is costly.

“I don’t see them salivating to get on the Magnificent Mile,” he said.

Ciaravino said downtown’s Riverwalk, where city investment and incentives created a new food and beverage district, could be a model for North Michigan Avenue.

“We have every type of cuisine in Chicago, and that should be showcased on the Magnificent Mile,” he said.

Bares said the district’s vacancy rate should tick down later this year when women’s fashion boutique Aritzia opens for business at 555 N. Michigan Ave., the former home of The Gap.

“It’s a long-term lease for the entire space,” she said.

The Magnificent Mile could soon see other far-reaching changes. In 2021 Bares’ group, along with the Chicago Department of Planning and Development, asked the Urban Land Institute to brainstorm ideas to refresh the blocks between Oak Street and the Chicago River. The institute’s 2022 report envisioned North Michigan Avenue becoming more like the Champs-Élysées in Paris, with a pedestrian bridge linking the street with Oak Street Beach, new pocket plazas and sidewalk cafes, and a grand public common stretching from the historic Water Tower complex to Lake Shore Drive.

“Michigan Avenue has always evolved,” Bares said.

“(Lurie Children’s) needed some additional space and this will help them meet their strategic goal,” said ADA Executive Director Dr. Raymond Cohlmia.

The tower was home to the ADA for nearly 60 years, but with staff now going to the office just two or three days each week, the organization no longer needs the same amount of office space, he added. The group will instead move its office headquarters into the top four floors of 401 N. Michigan Ave. on the Magnificent Mile. The ADA also plans to consolidate its research laboratories from both 211 E. Chicago Ave. and other facilities in Maryland into a new facility in the Boston metro area.

The price paid for the ADA property was not disclosed.

The organization is financially healthy, Cohlmia said, so selling the building wasn’t done to generate a windfall.

“That really wasn’t a factor in our decision,” he said. “Ultimately, we wanted to stay in Chicago and this allows us to reconfigure our space while meeting the needs of today’s work environment. And we also thought, ‘why don’t we help Lurie at the same time?’”

The nonprofit Lurie Children’s completed the 1.4-million-square-foot, 24-story hospital at 225 E. Chicago Ave. in 2012, and soon expanded into the ADA building, becoming its largest tenant. Although it has not finalized an expansion plan, hospital officials said buying the tower will allow Lurie to serve more patients.

“As we continue to experience strong demand for our services, we plan to expand clinical capacity by moving more administrative offices out of the main hospital to our new building next door,” Kary McIlwain, senior vice president at Lurie Children’s, said in a statement. “This is an exciting milestone that coincides with the June anniversary of the hospital’s move 12 years ago to the state-of-the art facility we built in Streeterville. Acquiring this adjacent building will help ensure a sustainable and impactful future for our organization and the communities we serve.”

“We once had to drive far outside our community to go to a restaurant or to a grocery store,” said the Rev. James Meeks, president of the Hope Center Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Salem Baptist Church of Chicago. “There was no sit-down restaurant or even a pizza place that would deliver to our homes.”

Other initiatives by the developers over the past decade brought in restaurants such as Potbelly, Culver’s and Lexington Betty Smokehouse, along with a new Walmart. The initiatives established a community center and created jobs at several new manufacturing and distribution centers. Meeks said it’s all meant to replace the thousands of jobs lost starting in the 1970s when the decline of heavy industry gutted the economies of both the Pullman and nearby Roseland neighborhoods.

“Back in the ’70s, Michigan Avenue in Roseland was almost like North Michigan Avenue downtown,” he said. “We had stores, movie theaters and restaurants.”

The Culver’s, opened in 2021, did about $3 million in sales last year, said David Doig, president of Chicago Neighborhood Initiatives, and that attracted other retailers such as Chick-fil-A.

“I think we’ve proven that this is a viable retail corridor,” he said. “And we’ve learned that once you get Chick-fil-A, other folks want to be there as well. They drive traffic.”

The developers are close to signing deals with other retailers, and Pullman Gateway, located just east of Pullman National Historical Park, could soon see a bank and other fast casual and sit-down restaurants, he said. They expect to finish construction of the Chick-fil-A at 11201 S. Corliss Ave. by the end of 2024. The 5,200-sqaure-foot restaurant will provide about 145 construction jobs and 125 permanent jobs. It will start out as corporate-owned, but Doig expects Chick-fil-A to eventually seek out a franchise owner.

Ald. Anthony Beale, 9th, said many national retailers may not have realized that Pullman and Roseland restaurants can make money.

“I don’t think they were looking at our neighborhoods, but we have a dynamic team in place and we’re going after their business,” he said. “We get in front of them and we’re salespeople for our community. We’re not sitting back and waiting for them to come to us.”

Beale said other initiatives, including a proposed 480,000-square-foot medical campus in Roseland, at 111th Street and South Michigan Avenue, will help revive the Far South Side. The Chicago Plan Commission approved the Roseland Medical District Master Plan in 2022, and the state later awarded the effort $25 million for land acquisition, environmental cleanup and infrastructure improvements.

“This could be a potential Northwestern Memorial Hospital or University of Chicago Medical Center, but for the Far South Side,” Beale said.

Meeks looks forward to the launch of the Chicago Transit Authority’s Red Line extension project, which will extend the train line from 95th Street in Roseland to 130th Street in the Altgeld Gardens neighborhood.

“People will be able to travel here, and people who live here will be better able to get out and go other places to work,” he said. “We’re praying and believing that with the Red Line extension, we will see the old glory days of Michigan Avenue return.”

Developers Weldon Development Group and Mark Goodman & Associates won approval for the largest project, a two-tower complex with up to 794 units that will reshape a corner of Fulton Market, a former meatpacking, warehouse and industrial district.

The developers originally wanted to create a 16-story life sciences tower on the site at 400 N. Elizabeth St. But after rising interest rates and a falloff in venture capital funding for start-ups dampened the industry’s outlook, an apartment plan took shape instead.

The $300 million proposal drew some criticism. Several of its future neighbors, including Michelle Strassburger, told commission members that the developers had not done enough community outreach, or fully considered the impact such a large development would have on the neighborhood.

But John Bosca of the community organization Neighbors of River West said his group supported the proposal.

“Any time there is dramatic change, there is going to be those that have a difficult time with it,” he said.

Ald. Walter Burnett, 27th, told commission members that the developers held at least eight community meetings, and that a new complex on this scale would boost the local economy and bring badly needed green space.

“This will bring some life to the area,” he said, perhaps sparking the creation of new restaurants or retail. “This will bring the density we need to get beautiful amenities. Unfortunately, we can’t satisfy everybody all the time.”

The complex, sandwiched between the Metra and Union Pacific train tracks, will include a public dog park and lawn, along with 145 affordable apartments, winning praise from several commission members.

“I hear the neighbors’ concerns, but I think this is an amazing opportunity for many families to live in a beautiful community,” said member Guacolda Reyes.

First Ward Ald. and commission member Daniel La Spata said he was impressed the affordable units will include nearly 100 two-bedroom apartments for families, instead of mostly studios and one-bedrooms, favored by many developers because they cost less.

“This is affordable housing done right,” La Spata said. “We know there is a need for deeply affordable family units.”

Two less-controversial proposals from developer Sterling Bay were also approved. The company got a green light for its plan to build a 29-story, 390-unit apartment tower at 370 N. Carpenter St. in Fulton Market, next to Trammell Crow Co.’s new life sciences building at 400 N. Aberdeen St. It will include 78 affordable apartments.

Also approved was a proposal for a 24-story, 355-unit apartment building at 2033 N. Kingsbury St., including up to 71 affordable units. That building will be just east of Sterling Bay’s Lincoln Yards development, a $6 billion plan that could include skyscrapers up to 595 feet tall. The developer is still hunting for investors to fund that project, first approved in 2019.

Commission members delayed at least until June a vote on whether to approve demolishing several century-old Southwest Side warehouses considered significant by historic preservationists. Developer IDI Logistics bought the buildings in the 4100 block of West Ogden Avenue in North Lawndale, including several by noted architect Alfred Alschuler, and wants to replace them with a single, $44 million modern distribution facility.

“We feel this proposal is an erasure of that history,” said Noah Jones, a Brighton Park resident and great-great grandson of the original owner. “It would carve up this neighborhood with a soulless warehouse.”

The buildings sit within the district of 24th Ward Ald. Michael Rodriguez, who Wednesday sent a letter to Chicago Plan Commission Chair Laura Flores, stating he opposes the project because community members do not want to see a facility for transportation, distribution or logistics on the site.

“Since IDI has not been able to come to an agreement for any community benefits, nor has IDI listened to the North Lawndale Economic Advisory Committee in developing their plan for the site, I must state my opposition to this planned development and urge the commission to reject this proposal,” he wrote.

The number of office workers coming downtown seems to be inching up every month. Lunch rushes are back, and Lee hopes the summer will bring hordes of hungry tourists to her fast casual restaurant group.

Brown Bag closed two of its downtown locations in 2020, when the pandemic gutted the dining scene. But Lee is starting to think about opening another location.

“This is probably the first year that things are stable,” said Zach Flanzman, Brown Bag’s chief operating officer. “We feel fully back to 2019 levels.”

More than 300 downtown restaurants, bars and bistros shuttered during the first three years of the pandemic, including iconic spots such as Ronny’s Steakhouse and chain locations such as Starbucks and Panera Bread, according to Datassential, an analytics firm for the food and beverage industries.

But surviving Loop restaurant owners now say they can see light at the end of the tunnel. Even though many downtown office workers are still absent Mondays and Fridays, restaurateurs have found ways to compensate.

The rise of online ordering has offered a boost, and some landlords, recognizing downtown eateries can’t pull in as many dollars, agreed to charge tenants less rent. Other restaurants are fattening bottom lines by selling more drinks, shortening their hours or renting out space for special events.

“There is just not as many people coming downtown as there were pre-pandemic,” said Sam Toia, president and CEO of the Illinois Restaurant Association, an industry lobbying group. “But there are restaurants that have figured out how to survive and thrive.”

Datassential found the Loop lost a couple dozen restaurants and bars in 2023. But that’s a much slower pace of closings than in previous years, and several shuttered spots already host new restaurants.

Overall, the amount of space occupied by downtown restaurants ticked up slightly to 1.27 million square feet last year, said John Vance, principal at Stone Real Estate Corp.

“The business is clawing back,” he said. “In the Loop, in my opinion, what’s happening is that the landlords and the restaurant operators had a sit-down, and the restaurant owners said, this is what I’m experiencing: costs are up, customers are down, so let’s figure it out.”

Operating a restaurant in the Loop is still not for the faint of heart. But the fact that some restaurants have found their footing bodes well for downtown. Populating downtown buildings with innovative restaurants could help the Loop office market rebound, said Karoline Eigel, a commercial real estate broker with Cushman & Wakefield. Companies need ways to entice more people back to the office, and that means making downtown unique, rather than filling spaces with run-of-the-mill restaurants.

One section of downtown where restaurants have soared is Fulton Market. In 2023, 515,000 square feet of the neighborhood’s retail space was devoted to food and beverage, up from 430,000 two years earlier.

“That’s a big jump,” Vance said. “Everybody in retail and restaurants knows about Fulton Market. It was the bright spot in Chicago when the Loop and The Magnificent Mile were being beat up.”

DineAmic Hospitality opened La Serre, a French-Mediterranean restaurant on Fulton Market’s Green Street in March.

“There is just momentum in Fulton Market, a clustering,” said DineAmic principal David Rekhson. “Someone opens something new, creates something unique, and others follow.”

A turn for the better

Empty storefronts still dot downtown streets, and foot traffic, the lifeblood of restaurants and retail, remains far below pre-pandemic levels. But there are signs of improvement, and restaurateurs are taking note.

The retail vacancy rate downtown hit more than 30% last year, the highest recorded and more than double the 2019 rate, according to a Stone Real Estate study. And the number of visits on foot to major Chicago office buildings was down more than 37% in March compared with the same month in 2019, according to a study from Placer.ai, a data analytics firm.

But office foot traffic was up more than 8% compared to March 2023, Placer.ai found.

“I do see more and more workers coming back on Monday and Friday, and another change is we have many more tourists than we used to have,” said Tamar Mizrahi, partner at Goddess and the Baker, a breakfast and lunch cafe with five locations in the Loop and River North. “It’s changing the numbers on the weekend.”

Business at her cafe is up from 2019, she added, with the Loop locations doing best. Mizrahi attributes that to a strong business catering service, and fewer options for diners after the loss of so many other Loop spots during the pandemic.

Rekhson’s company also operates Prime & Provisions, a two-story steakhouse at 222 N. LaSalle St. The restaurant, started in 2015, had stopped serving lunch several days a week, but conditions improved over the past year.

“We are definitely starting to see lunch come back heavily,” he said. “We recently went back to serving lunch five days per week.”

Other restaurateurs see new opportunities downtown. Dan Rook, founder and director of food and beverage at Industry Ales, a new brewpub and restaurant at 230 S. Wabash Ave., said he and several partners began planning the project in 2019.

“It was a dream project for a long, long time, but reality hit during the pandemic,” he said. “When we talked to people about opening a place in Chicago, everybody looked at us like we had 10 heads. Everybody had their doubts.”

But the partners began building out their 14,000-square-foot space in 2021 — adding a brewery, a beer hall and private event spaces — and opened in March.

“The profit margins of our business were already slim, even before the pandemic,” he said. “But we’re a brewpub first and foremost, and your margins are much better if you brew your own beer.”

Rook said Industry Ales aims to become a community hub for residents, not just a restaurant for office workers, and wants to use its event spaces to bring in even more revenue.

“We teed it up perfectly,” Rook said. “We opened up in what will be Chicago’s phoenix-like revival this summer.”

The Loop’s population reached 46,000 during the pandemic, an almost 9% increase since 2020, according to a 2023 Chicago Loop Alliance report. The advocacy group expects the neighborhood’s population to grow an additional 17% by 2028.

Sujan Sarkar moved to Chicago in 2020, later opening River North’s Michelin-starred Indienne, and last year began looking at downtown locations for a new concept, an India-inspired coffee shop.

“I was a little hesitant at first,” he said. “I saw few people downtown, so a year ago there was still a question mark.”

But in March, he opened the 2,600-square-foot Swadesi in 328 S. Jefferson St., a West Loop office building near the Old Post Office, providing artisanal chai, coffee and pastries.

“We opened with very limited hours, but we’ve seen an amazing response, and now people are even queuing up outside on Saturday,” he said.

The building owner wanted a more active first floor, so Swadesi was able to get attractive lease terms, Sarkar added.

“That helped us,” he said. “Otherwise, the restaurant business is not easy.”

He hopes to eventually add an outdoor patio, but any expansion will be done slowly.

“We want to keep it as it is, at least for a couple months,” he said. “I don’t believe in chain restaurants; every restaurant should have its own personality.”

Still a tough financial proposition

Eigel, of Cushman & Wakefield, advises restaurateurs to use caution when launching new Loop businesses.

The high vacancy rates in many downtown office buildings have cut the amount of revenue they generate, so many property owners can’t afford to give breaks on rent or fund major improvements to first-floor restaurants.

“Somebody opening a restaurant there now needs to be experienced and know what they’re doing,” Eigel said.

It’s still less expensive to open restaurants on the outskirts of downtown, said Joshua Tilden, chief operations officer of Underscore Hospitality. Tilden and chef Erling Wu-Bower opened Maxwells Trading, a restaurant in the Kinzie Industrial Corridor, in December. The restaurant includes a retail space and rooftop farm.

“I’d have to see significant tenant improvement dollars to go into the Loop,” Tilden said.

Earlier this year, Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration awarded grants of up to $250,000 to six Loop restaurants still struggling to recover from the pandemic. The restaurants, including Ceres Café in the Chicago Board of Trade building and Mizrahi’s Goddess and the Baker, are all clustered around LaSalle Street, where a coalition of developers is preparing to remake a collection of antiquated office buildings into a new residential neighborhood with more than 1,000 apartments. The grants are to be used for renovations.

Restaurants need a refresh every few years, said Mizrahi, who wants to upgrade her storefront.

“This is a project I would really love to do, but I probably could not do it without the grant,” she said.

Another grant went to The Roanoke at 135 W. Madison St., and Brad Alaoui, chief operating officer of Roanoke Hospitality, said it’s a chance to bring in better furniture and new lights.

But the Loop still needs more activity for restaurants to thrive, he added. He looks forward to the coming of Google, which plans to take over a renovated James R. Thompson Center in 2026, and the eventual makeover of LaSalle Street.

“We believe in LaSalle Street,” Alaoui said. “There is a lot of history and great architecture here, so all of this is going to have a huge impact.”

The area hasn’t seen a new skyscraper in decades, and Fern Hill Co. wants the City Council to greenlight a 44-story apartment tower on North Avenue between Wells Street and LaSalle Drive next to the nearly century-old Moody Church. The proposed 500-unit building, called Old Town Canvas, would include 100 affordable units.

Neighborhood residents and affordable housing advocates packed the Latin School of Chicago auditorium for the meeting Tuesday evening, hosted by 2nd Ward Ald. Brian Hopkins. Many locals told Fern Hill President Nick Anderson that his plan would choke surrounding streets with traffic and harm Old Town’s small-town feel, while other attendees said Chicago is in dire need of new housing, especially affordable housing.

“This is simply way too big for Old Town and the block,” said Kevin Vaughan, owner of Corcoran’s Grill & Pub at 1615 N. Wells St. He prefers a mid-size building on the site, now occupied by a Walgreens and church parking lot. “That is the type of building we should be talking about.”

But Old Town Canvas would help address the city’s housing crisis, according to Chicago resident Jordan Gold, protecting millennials like him from the skyrocketing cost of living, including rising rents. He also opposes local neighborhood associations, which block housing development.

“They hijack the voice of other Chicagoans,” he said. “Please say yes to this. The city needs more of this.”

Hopkins said he hasn’t decided whether to support Fern Hill, which needs approval from the Chicago Plan Commission and a zoning change from City Council.

Tuesday was the seventh major community meeting about Fern Hill’s plan, but Hopkins wants more community input, and has asked city transportation officials to conduct a comprehensive traffic study for the neighborhood, including how to make it safer to cross nearby Clark Street and increase safety for bike riders.

“We will need to have another meeting when that study is complete,” he said. “This is an ongoing community process.”

Anderson said this corner of the neighborhood, including a pair of gas stations, is severely underutilized. Old Town Canvas will create a new Walgreens, replace a brick wall on North Avenue with other retail, and perhaps entice a grocer to occupy the now-shuttered Treasure Island Foods supermarket at 1639 N. Wells St.

“When you look at surface parking lots, gas stations and blank walls, there is a need for something better,” he said. “There has to be an approach that includes building more housing and increasing the tax base of the city.”

Anderson estimated the proposed tower would generate about $2.5 million in annual property taxes.

All those who spoke out against the proposed tower acknowledged Chicago’s need for more housing but pleaded with Anderson to return to the drawing board and come back with a smaller building.

“We fought urban renewal in the ’60s, and if we hadn’t, we’d be another Sandburg Village,” said Diane Gonzalez, a longtime resident of Old Town, where many homes date back to the 19th century. “Come up with something more palatable, and we’ll be with you.”

Linda Konitz, a resident of the Americana Towers Condominium building at 1636 N. Wells St., said the North Avenue and LaSalle Street intersection is already prone to traffic jams, and Fern Hill’s decision to put its entrance on LaSalle will further clog the streets.

“How many red lights will it take to get through the North and LaSalle intersection if this tower goes forward?” she said.

But it would not be the first tall building in the area, said Chicago resident Butler Adams. Along with the 419-unit Americana Towers, the James Kilmer Condominiums building at 1560 N. Sandburg Terrace, Eugenie Terrace on the Park at 1730 N. Clark St. and 1660 N. LaSalle St. were all completed in the 1970s and 1980s.

“I don’t see why people living in 40-story buildings that are 50 years old are complaining about this project,” Adams said.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker said at a Monday news conference that Google’s arrival could bring some magic back to the Central Loop.

“Google is one of Chicago’s great corporate citizens, and we are so proud to see it become a central feature of downtown Chicago,” Pritzker said. “This is an incredible investment in (Google’s) future, and ours.”

Prime/Capri Interests, a venture led by Chicago developers Michael Reschke and Quintin Primo, bought the Helmut Jahn-designed Thompson Center in 2022 from the state of Illinois for $105 million and made plans to preserve the aging building instead of demolishing it. Google agreed to take over the building at 100 W. Randolph St. after the duo completes the renovation.

“It’s basically going to be rebuilt and be a new building,” Reschke said. “It’s so exciting to see a company like Google use its presence as a force for good.”

Loop landlords and business owners, many still hurting from the rise of remote work, have high hopes other companies will flock to the Loop in Google’s wake. The internet giant helped transform Fulton Market, a former industrial area in the West Loop, into a neighborhood of upscale residences and office towers after it took over a former cold storage building there in 2015.

Downtown’s vacancy rate hit nearly 24% earlier this year, a historic high, according to Colliers.

Crews will replace the Thompson Center’s existing glass facade with triple-paned glass, which will let in more natural light and cut energy use for the 1.2 million-square-foot structure, first completed in 1985. An outdated heating and cooling system, which sometimes made state employees sweat on hot summer days, will also be replaced. And workers at other Loop offices, tourists and visitors will get to enjoy a new public plaza with trees and space for food and beverage retailers.

“We didn’t want this to be just a Google asset,” said Karen Sauder, Google’s Chicago site lead. “With the Thompson Center, we saw the chance to revitalize the Loop. We think our employees will enjoy it too.”

The renovated building will be all electric, she added. The company hopes to secure LEED Platinum, the highest sustainability rating given by the world’s most popular green building certification program.

The Thompson Center’s train station at 100 W. Lake St., where six Chicago Transit Authority lines converge, will remain open throughout construction.

Google wasn’t just attracted to downtown Chicago by the Thompson Center’s soaring atrium, Sauder said. The city’s tech sector accounts for 18% of the workforce, a deep pool of labor that will help the company staff up its new Midwest home.

Mayor Brandon Johnson said the renovation sends a message to other tech companies looking to expand or relocate.

“Google’s makeover of the Thompson Center truly affirms what we know about Chicago, that Chicago is a globally connected, world-class hub,” he said.

Google could also boost the city’s plan, started under former Mayor Lori Lightfoot and continued by Johnson, to transform a collection of antiquated office buildings on and near LaSalle Street into a new residential neighborhood with more than 1,000 apartments, said Chicago Department of Planning and Development Commissioner Ciere Boatright.

Reschke and Primo are tackling the largest portion of the $520 million LaSalle residential project. They plan to transform 111 W. Monroe St., a 1911 skyscraper, by adding 345 apartments, including 105 affordable units.

But Google’s new hub will be the neighborhood’s centerpiece, Primo said.

“We are truly adding new sinew and muscle to the Thompson Center,” he said. “It’s a stunning new lease on life.”

The firm’s residential subsidiary, High Street Residential, broke ground last year on the 368-unit tower at 1114 W. Carroll Ave. and will start signing leases this summer. Called Flora Apartments, the tower will be part of Trammell Crow’s Fulton Park Campus, a collection of up to six high-rises with apartments and laboratory space for life sciences and other research companies totaling more than 2 million square feet, all centered around the neighborhood’s first public park.

“We think we are well positioned for success because we got the project out of the ground when we did,” said John Carlson, principal of Trammell Crow.

The company secured financing in 2022 for Flora Apartments, located one block south of its new life sciences and research tower at 400 N. Aberdeen St., just before rising interest rates and construction costs put a squeeze on new rental development. Twenty percent of the units will be reserved as affordable.

And with only about 900 new downtown Chicago apartments getting delivered in 2025, any new units in Fulton Market are likely to be snapped up, said Ron DeVries, senior managing director of Integra Realty Resources.

“Fulton Market is where everyone wants to live right now, and there’s not going to be any notable new supply, so I think this is a good time to bring a new building to market,” DeVries said.

Even with the slowdown, Trammell Crow isn’t the only developer with an apartment project underway. Earlier this year, Shapack Partners, CRG and KMW Communities started construction on 220 N. Ada St., a 308-unit tower several blocks west of Flora Apartments.

Carlson said years of construction in the neighborhood brought many new apartment and office towers. But residents in community meetings expressed frustration that developers did not add green space for families or workers on lunch breaks, so the company will by autumn open Fulton Park, a public park adjacent to Flora Apartments with an outdoor lawn and other green spaces where residents can attend concerts, farmers markets and fairs.

“It’s a theme we’ve heard for quite some time,” he said. “We want to take down the construction fences and invite the public in.”

It’s a welcome move, said Damone Richardson, a Coldwell Banker broker and Fulton Market resident since 2010.

“In the past there was always a big concern about the lack of public park space,” he said. “We can always use more green space, especially on that side of Fulton Market, because right now it’s barren and industrial looking, although it’s filling up quick.”

Trammell Crow completed two other towers nearby, totaling 725,000 square feet and dedicated to life sciences and lab-based research. The property at 1375 W. Fulton Market, finished in 2020, is 98% leased, Carlson said, and 400 N. Aberdeen St., completed two years later, is more than 30% leased, including deals signed with the Illinois Institute of Technology and Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Chicago.

The life sciences industry did meet headwinds last year, including rising interest rates and a fall-off in venture capital funding for industry startups. Some developers balked at pursuing additional projects, including Mark Goodman & Associates, which planned to develop a 16-story life sciences tower at 400 N. Elizabeth St. in Fulton Market, and now plans to develop apartments.

But the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative’s decision last year to select Chicago as the home of a $250 million biohub, and the Illinois Institute of Technology’s decision to establish itself in Fulton Market, are both signs that local lab and research firms will thrive when interest rates fall and venture capital loosens up, according to Carlson.

“(IIT) is the first university to plant a flag in Fulton Market,” he said.

Trammell Crow is also forging ahead with 1105 W. Carroll, the campus’ fourth building. It will rise 26 stories and include 660,000 square feet of lab and office space for both life sciences and other types of research. The company also plans two additional buildings, one of about 500,000 square feet at 1152 W. Carroll, and another of about 225,000 square feet at 1234 W. Fulton, although it hasn’t decided how to use that space.

“We want to be as flexible as possible,” Trammell Crow Vice President Morgan Baer Blaska said.

The stadium itself would cost $3.2 billion to build, with another $1.4 billion in proposed infrastructure improvements, according to sources familiar with the plan who spoke to the Tribune on the condition of anonymity.

Chicago Bears unveil lakefront stadium plans; ‘I remain skeptical,’ Pritzker says

The sources said the Bears plan to pledge $2.3 billion, which includes some financing through the NFL. But the Bears’ plan includes an additional $2.3 billion in public financing, along with refinancing outstanding debt for prior publicly financed stadium projects for the Bears and White Sox, according to the sources.

Taxpayers would be on the hook for the proposed infrastructure improvements along with about $1 billion in new borrowing to finance the new stadium south of Soldier Field, the sources said.

To make the plan a reality, the Bears want the Illinois General Assembly to approve new bonding for the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority, which carries the debt for prior projects at Soldier Field and Guaranteed Rate Field, sources said.

Some of the new borrowing would be used to roll over existing stadium debt, and the plan calls for the new borrowing to be paid off over 40 years, which also would require legislative approval.

Sources said the Bears’ plan calls for the debt to be repaid without raising the 2% hotel tax that currently goes to ISFA.

The details are expected to be revealed at a much-anticipated news conference at noon Wednesday where officials will lay out plans for the domed stadium with increased open space.

The 2% hotel tax has fallen far short of paying off the existing debt. As a result, taxpayers still owe $629 million for past renovations of Soldier Field and Guaranteed Rate Field, whose occupants, the White Sox, also are seeking a new stadium in the South Loop.

Raising ISFA’s borrowing limit and stretching repayment over 40 years could prove to be a tough sell in Springfield, however, where legislative leaders so far have given the Bears, and the Sox, a cool reception.

Then there is the question of whether the Bears can legally build on the site. The city’s lakefront protection ordinance calls for public use of the lakefront, and the team has called for public ownership of the stadium.

The nonprofit Friends of the Parks opposes building a stadium for a privately owned team on the lakefront. The group successfully drove “Star Wars” creator George Lucas away from plans to build a movie art museum on the same site, now used for parking lots.

The Bears’ proposal will have to win over skeptics, including Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who a spokesperson said Tuesday had not been briefed by the team about the stadium plans. The governor had previously called the Bears’ proposed investment “a good first step,” and said he’s willing to listen to their proposal, but said it shouldn’t be a priority for the state.

As the Chicago Bears prepare to unveil their vision for a new downtown stadium, projects in other NFL cities could prove instructive

Joe Ferguson, president of the Civic Federation, a fiscal watchdog group, told the Tribune in a recent interview that the Bears and Sox need to show vetted cost and revenue projections.

“Everybody wants to keep the teams (in the city) — the question is, on what terms?” he said. “There’s not a lot of information necessary to say one of these (plans) actually is viable, or whether it’s a way to take us to the cleaners when we’re already carrying hundreds of millions of dollars of debt for the last time we did something like this.”

The city recently went through a similar scenario, he said, when it chose the Bally’s casino for development, only to find the project is already being scaled back and has funding issues.

“I think Gov. Pritzker has spoken to this exactly right, with a real wariness about public funding of sports stadiums,” Ferguson said. “We need to see reliable, thorough revenue projections for this before we can even open the conversation.”

Making the situation more precarious, Ferguson said, is that all levels of government are facing financial cliffs in multiple areas — pensions, transit and Chicago Public Schools — with the end of billions of dollars in federal COVID-19 pandemic money.

Sports economist J.C. Bradbury, voicing a common concern among economists, said whatever public money is earmarked for the stadium would be better spent on other public projects, or returned to taxpayers.

“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me,” Bradbury said. “The Bears aren’t going to leave one of the most iconic football markets in the country. Tell the Bears to pay for their own damn stadium, and if they don’t like it, to go jump in Lake Michigan.”

The team has taken a long, strange trip to get to this point. In 2021, officials agreed to buy the former Arlington International Racecourse for $197 million, closing on the deal last year. Under prior President and CEO Ted Phillips, the team made an elaborate presentation of its plans for a $5 billion mixed-used development on the 326-acre site, with an enclosed stadium, housing and entertainment.

But since Kevin Warren became team president and CEO last year, the team has been unable to reach an agreement over property taxes with local schools in the Arlington Heights area.

As the Minnesota Vikings did when Warren was an executive there, the Bears reversed course from a suburban stadium site to downtown. Warren has extolled the beauty and energy of the city, talked of his rapport with Mayor Brandon Johnson, and has said the lakefront is the “ideal location.”

“Absolutely we can build something that would be magnificent downtown,” he said.

The team wouldn’t necessarily have to move right away, with a lease at Soldier Field through 2033. But Warren has talked about the importance of momentum in getting the stadium project done. State lawmakers are scheduled to meet until May 24, then have a veto session in the fall, and a brief lame-duck session in the new year.

Reconstructing the museum campus around a new Bears stadium could help attract new residential and retail development along the lakefront, replacing some of the tax revenue lost by the declining property values of downtown office towers, said Eric Feinberg, vice chairman and co-head of the Chicago region for Savills, a commercial real estate firm.

If the Bears’ proposal improves lakefront access with better public transportation with new gathering spaces, it’s possible the new stadium district will attract families year-round, not just on a handful of Sundays.

Feinberg said he still doesn’t understand why the Bears didn’t settle disagreements with Arlington Heights’ officials before buying the former Churchill Downs site.

“It seems so strange they would plop down all this money, and then say this is just not working out for us,” he said. “It boggles my mind.”

If the Bears do cut a deal for a lakefront stadium, it would leave Arlington Heights with a big hole to fill, said John Melaniphy of Melaniphy & Associates, a former business and development coordinator for the village of Arlington Heights. But even without football, the former racetrack site could still attract mixed-use developments with apartments, restaurants and entertainment.

Chicago Tribune’s Olivia Olander contributed

City planners told the Chicago Plan Commission the 2-mile stretch between Grand Avenue and Irving Park Road can become a destination neighborhood like its Near West Side predecessor with improvements to the streetscape that can help attract visitors and new residents.

That section of Harlem is the future home of the National Italian American Sports Hall of Fame, and already hosts many Italian restaurants and shops, but isn’t well-known to tourists or outsiders, said Carmen Martinez of the Chicago Department of Planning and Development.

She presented a draft of the Harlem Avenue Visioning Study at Thursday’s commission meeting, outlining a plan to create community gathering spaces and new landscaping, increase pedestrian safety, maintain the neighborhood’s heritage and perhaps install archways on the thoroughfare, creating a brand like the South Side’s Chinatown or Paseo Boricua on Division Street in Humboldt Park.

“This vision is more than 20 years in the making,” she said.

Local business leaders began pushing city officials two decades ago to further recognize their neighborhood, which extends through the Montclare and Dunning community areas, Martinez said. In 2023, city planners, along with state and city transportation officials, local aldermen, area businesses and a consultant team led by site design group ltd., a Chicago-based landscape architect, began walking tours of the area and holding community meetings.

Neighborhood residents urged commission members Thursday to adopt the plan.

“It’s a beautiful community, but our community is getting old, and we need a new generation to come in,” said longtime Harlem Avenue businessmen Gino Bartucci Sr., who operates a gift shop.

A full vote by the Plan Commission will be held in June, but funding for the work will require additional approvals from City Council.

Martinez said the city will initially focus on the intersections of Harlem Avenue and Belmont Avenue, Diversey Avenue and Roscoe Street, which feature Italian, Hispanic and Middle Eastern restaurants, bakeries, cafes and shops. She proposed transforming vacant lots or buildings into gathering spaces or plazas, widening sidewalks with new planters, adding bus stops, and where possible, shortening crosswalks with bumpouts.

“This will make the area much more attractive to new businesses,” said Portage Park Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Michael Giordano.

Harlem is currently a daunting street to cross for many pedestrians, said Martinez, but designing safe, walkable areas will hopefully bring travelers and convention attendees from nearby O’Hare Airport and Rosemont.

“Let’s bring them to Harlem Avenue and show them another part of the city,” she said.

The National Italian American Sports Hall of Fame will open at 3417 N. Harlem Ave. in the fall, said President Ron Onesti. It was recently located on Taylor Street in Little Italy, but displacement and gentrification forced many Italian American residents to leave.

It made sense to move the hall, which features exhibits such as Rocky Marciano’s 1952 heavyweight championship belt, an Indy 500 race car driven by Mario Andretti and Joe DiMaggio’s baseball glove, to Harlem Avenue.

“Chicago’s Taylor Street was where Italians originally settled, but in the 1950s and 1960s, Mayor Daley used eminent domain to clear the neighborhood so they could build the University of Illinois at Chicago and the Medical District, so the Italian community was essentially wiped out,” he said.

“They had to find a new place quickly, and many moved to the Northwest Side and suburbs like Elmwood Park and Norridge,” he said. “Harlem Avenue flows through all these communities.”

The hall’s former Taylor Street location is now a boutique hotel.

Martinez said the planning department will continue meeting with residents and stakeholders to refine or adjust the plan even if it’s adopted.

“The engagement is not going to stop in June,” she said.